New Zealand will only use the Pfizer vaccine to immunize its population against the coronavirus, changing its previous plans to use four different drugs.
Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced the strategy on Monday, saying it was due to the effectiveness of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. It will be easier and fairer for all New Zealanders to have access to the same vaccine, he said.
However, the plan could also be partly due to delays in vaccine approval. For now, New Zealand health authorities have only approved Pfizer’s vaccine and are investigating two other options.
New Zealand has purchased 10 million doses of the vaccine from Pfizer, enough to inoculate the country’s 5 million people with the two necessary doses. Most doses are expected to arrive in New Zealand in the second half of the year, the president added.
So far New Zealand has only vaccinated a few thousand people, mostly frontier workers. The country has eliminated local infections of the virus, and vaccinations are not considered as urgent as in other countries.